Responsive is the Key to Future Web Design

Having a responsive website is essential to your marketing strategy, and there are some keyconsiderations you should keep in mind when designing a responsive website.

There are two major methods you can use to create a mobile website: Responsive design and mobiletemplates. With Responsive design, you only have one website that is coded to adapt to everyscreen size imaginable, no matter which one the device it’s being displayed on. In contrast, a mobiletemplate is different in that it’s a completely separate entity that requires you to have a secondmobile-only website or sub-domain. Mobile templates also are specifically built for each device, notper screen size.

Responsive design has been in the past the most popular and most widely used method fordesigning a mobile website. The reasons for this are varied:

1. Mobile Usage is Exploding

Many businesses don’t yet have a mobile website despite the fact that over 20% of Googlesearches are now performed on a mobile device. Also, over half of local searches were performedon a mobile device, nearly two-thirds have a better opinion of brands when they can view them overtheir mobile, and the same percentage of all emails are now being opened on mobile phones.

2. The KEY is Positive User Experience

If a user lands on your mobile website and becomes frustrated or can’t see what they arelooking for, there’s a good chance they will leave immediately to go to another website and it maybe your competitor’s. If they have a positive experience instead, a good two-thirds are more likelyto buy your product or use your service.

3. Blogging and Social Activities Attract Mobile Visitors

If you are like most Inbound Marketers, and your strategy incorporates elements of bloggingand social media, more than likely you’ve been seeing increased mobile traffic. However, if you aresharing out content links, or links to your website and you don’t have a mobile-friendly website,you are going to experience high bounce rates and low conversion rates, plus you are also going tohave a very frustrated audience.

4. Responsive Design is Preferred

Search engines like Google prefer responsive web design over mobile templates. Having asingle URL makes it easier for their bots to crawl your site. Also, with Google’s external linkalgorithm, the chance of on-page SEO errors is reduced. Responsive sites typically perform muchbetter and are a lot easier to maintain than a separate, mobile template site.

5. The KEY: A Speedy Responsive Website

Developers recommend that the content above the fold on a mobile device should load inunder one second, and the entire page should load in under two seconds. This typically isn’tpossible when loading a website designed for the desktop on a mobile device. When users have towait a long time for a page to load, there’s a good chance they will leave and go elsewhere.

6. Responsive Works on Future Devices

One of the greatest benefits of responsive design is that the size of the template is that the design isbased on screen size not the device itself. It doesn’t matter what size screen is being used to viewyour website, it will be displayed properly. So, in the future, as new devices like watches, glasses,even TVs are being used for web browsing, your responsive site is still going to look exactly like itwas intended to look.

In the future, it will be extremely critical that your website provides mobile users with a friendlyand easy-to-use experience. Having a website designed for mobile is no longer simply a nicefeature, it is a necessity in today’s world, and will be the KEY to the future growth of your business.